There goes the artist-pencil—tracing waving lines and elegant forms, giving no more notion of the operations within than the hands of a clock do of the complication of the works. Formerly, the employers put two or three good foreign patterns into the artist’s hands, and said—“Make a new pattern out of these.” Now that we have schools of design, and more accessible specimens of art, the direction is given without the aids—“Make a new pattern,” and the artist sits down with nothing before him but pencil and paper—unless, indeed, he finds aids for himself in wild flowers, and other such instructors in beauty of form and color. By degrees, the different parts of the pattern shape themselves out, and combine—the centre groups with the ends, and the ends grow out into the sides with a natural and graceful transition. Then the portions, properly outlined, are delivered to the colorers, who cover the drawing with oiled paper, and begin to paint. It would not do to color the outlined drawing, because there are no outlines in the woven fabric. It is dazzling only to look upon. Much less minute is the transferring to the diced paper which is the real working pattern. The separate portions of the finished pattern of a single shawl, when laid on the floor, would cover the carpet of a large drawing-room. The taking down such a pattern upon paper occupies four months.
The weaving is done either by “lashing” or from Jacquard cards. The Jacquard loom answers for the eternal patterns, and the “lashing” method suffices for those which are not likely to be repeated. The man seated at the “piano-machine,” playing on a sort of keys from the colored pattern stuck up before his eyes, is punching the Jacquard cards, which are then transferred in their order to the lacing-machine, where they are strung together by boys into that series which is to operate upon the warp in the weaving, lifting up the right threads for the shuttle to pass under to form the pattern, as in other more familiar manufactures. The “lashing” is read off from the pattern, too, in the same way as with carpet patterns at Kendal; so many threads being taken up and interlaced with twine for a red stitch, and then so many more for a green, and so on. Boys then fasten each symbol of a hue to a netting of whipcord, by that tail of the netting which, by its knots, signifies that particular hue; so that, when the weaving comes to be done, the boy, pulling the symbolic cord, raises the threads of the warp—green, blue, or other—which are required for that throw of the shuttle. Thus the work is really all done before-hand, except the mere putting together of the threads; done, moreover, by any body but the weaver, who is—to say the truth—a mere shuttle-throwing machine. The poor man does not even see and know what he is doing. The wrong side of the shawl is uppermost—and not even such a wrong side as we see, which gives some notion of the pattern on the other. Previous to cutting, the wrong side of a shawl is a loose surface of floating threads of all colors; of the threads, in fact, which are thrown out of the pattern, and destined to be cut away and given to the papermakers to make coarse gray paper. One pities the weaver, who sits all day long throwing the shuttle, while the boy at the end of his loom pulls the cords which make the pattern, and throw up nothing but refuse to the eye. He has not even the relief of stopping to roll up what he has done; for a little machine is now attached to his loom, which saves the necessity of stopping for any such purpose. It is called “the up-taking motion.” By it a few little cogwheels are set to turn one another, and, finally, the roller, on which the woven fabric is wound as finished.
The bundles of weaving-strings and netting which regulate the pattern, are called “flowers.” From the quantity of labor and skill wrought up in their arrangement, they are very valuable. A pile of them, on a small table, were, as we were assured, worth one thousand pounds. We may regard each as the soul or spirit of the shawl—not creating its material, but animating it with character, personality, and beauty. We have said that it takes a man a week to weave a shawl: but this means a “long” shawl, and not a “square.” The square remain our favorites; but the female world does not seem to be of our mind. It is true the symmetry of the pattern is spoiled when the white centre hangs over one shoulder. It is true, the “longs” are heavy and very warm, from being twice doubled. But they have one advantage, which ladies hold to compensate for those difficulties; they can be folded to any size, and therefore to suit any figure—tall or short, stout or thin. We are assured that, for one square shawl that is sold, there are a hundred “longs.”
A capital machine now intervenes, with its labor-saving power; this time of French invention. Formerly, it took two girls a whole day to cut off the refuse threads from the back of a shawl. But this machine, superintended by a man, does it in a minute and a half. A horizontal blade is traversed by spiral blades fixed on a cylinder, the revolving of which gives to the blades the action of a pair of scissors. The man’s office is to put in the shawl, set the machine going, and to beat down the refuse as fast as it is cut off.
The upper surface of the shawl remains somewhat rough—rough enough to become soon a rather dirty article of dress, from the dust which it would catch up and retain. It is therefore smoothed by singing. This very offensive process is performed by a man who must have gone through a severe discipline before he could endure his business. He heats his iron (which is like a very large, heavy knife, turned up at the end) red hot, spreads the shawl on a table rather larger than itself, and passes the red-hot iron over the surface, with an even and not very rapid movement. What would that Egyptian dragoman have said, who, being asked to iron out an English clergyman’s white ducks, burned off the right leg with the first touch of his box-iron? That box-iron was not red-hot, nor any thing like it; yet there is no such destruction here. There is only the brown dust fizzing. Pah! that’s enough! let us go somewhere else.
In a light, upper room, women and girls are at work, sitting on low stools, each with a shawl stretched tightly over her knees. Some of these are darning, with the utmost nicety, any cracks, thin places, or “faults” in the fabric; darning each in its exact color. Some are putting silk fringes upon the printed shawls, tacking them in with a needle, measuring each length by eye and touch, and then knotting, or, as it is called, “netting” the lengths by cross-ties. One diminutive girl of nearly ten, is doing this with wonderful quickness, as she sits by her mother’s knee. The girls do not come to work before this age; nor the boys before twelve. In other rooms, women are seated at tables, or leaning over them, twisting the fringes of plaid shawls, or picking out knots and blemishes with pincers, and brushing all clean, and then folding them, with sheets of stiff pasteboard between, ready for the final pressure in the hydraulic press, which makes them fit for the shop.
The fabric for the printed shawls is light and thin, in comparison with the woven. The thinness is various; from the barège to the lightest gossamer that will bear the pressure of the block. The whole importance of the production consists in printing; for the fabric is simple and common enough. A man can weave ten yards per day of the barège; and the silk gauze, striped or plain, requires no particular remark.
The designing is done with the same pains and care as for the genuine shawl, but the range of subjects is larger. While something of the Oriental character of the shawl patterns must be preserved, much of the beauty of French figured silks and brocades and embroidery may be admitted. Thus the designing and coloring-rooms contain much that pleases the eye, though one does not see there the means and appliances which fill some apartment or another of Birmingham factories—the casts from the antique, the volumes of plates, the flower in water, and so on. The preparation of the blocks for printing, and yet more the application of them, reminded us of the paper-staining, which we had certainly never thought of before in connection with shawls. The wood used is lime-wood. Some of the blocks are chiseled and picked out, like those of the paper-stainer. The cast-blocks are more curious. A punch is used, the point or needle of which is kept hot by a flame, from which the workman’s head is defended by a shield of metal. He burns holes by puncturing with this hot needle along all the outlines of the block he holds in his hands, much as a little child pricks outlines on paper on a horse-hair chair-bottom. There is a groove along the face of each block, to allow the metal to run in. The burned blocks are screwed tight in a press, their joined tops forming a saucer, into which the molten metal (composed of tin, bismuth and lead) is poured. In it goes, and down the grooves, penetrating into all the burnt holes; and, of course, when cool, furnishing a cast of the patterns desired, in the form of upright thorns or spikes on a metallic ground or plate. These plates are filed smooth at the back, and fixed on wood, and you have the blocks ready to print from; one representing one color, another another, and so on, till the plates for a single shawl of many colors may mount up in value to a very large sum.
Before printing, the fabric has been well washed; the barège being passed, by machinery, over cylinders which apply and squeeze out a wash of soap, soda, and glue. All roughness had previously been removed by a “cropping” machine. After drying, it comes to the printing-table, where it is treated much like a paper-hanging. This is all very well; but what is to be done in case of a shower of rain? a not improbable incident in the life of a shawl. A paper-hanging would not stand a driving rain. Are ladies imposed upon in this matter, when they are offered a gay-printed shawl as wearable out of doors? By no means. Nobody knows how it is, but the fact is certain, that a good steaming, at a tremendous heat, fixes the colors by some chemical action, without in the least hurting their lustre: so the shawls go into the steaming-box, and come out of it able to bear as many washings as you please, without any change of color. After drying, in a heat of one hundred and ten degrees, they go up stairs to be surveyed, fringed, folded and pressed.
It seems a pity that the fat, easy, lazy Bokharian, and the slim, lithe, patient Hindoo, should not come to Paisley, and see how shawls are made there. To the one, shaving his camel on the plain, and the other, throwing his antique shuttle under the palm, how strange would be the noise, and the stench, and the speed, and the numbers employed, and the amount of production! To the one, it may be the work of years to furnish to the traveling merchant strips of eight inches wide, enough to make a shawl; and to the other, the production of such an article is an event in life; while here, at Paisley, if the pattern requires months, the weaving of the most genuine and valuable kind occupies only a week. We do not believe that the simple and patient Oriental will be driven out of the market by us, because there is no promise, at present, of our overtaking their excellence. We hope there will be room in the world of fashion for them and us forever—(the “forever” of that world.) We shall not go back to their methods, and it is not very likely that they should come up to ours; so we shall probably each go on in our own way, which is what everybody likes best.